UNITED NATIONS: Secretary-General Kofi Annan was due to meet officials from the coalition provisional authority and Iraqi officials on Monday. The secretary-general will be under pressure from the United States to have his organization play a "pivotal role" in helping resolve a crisis that shows no sign of abating. But once again, what will really be sought is United Nations support for the Bush administration's failing occupation policy, which is now being publicly challenged by Ayatollah Ali al- Sistani, the leading and immensely powerful leader of the Shia majority in Iraq.

This new drive for involving the United Nations, an organization the Bush administration has repeatedly sidelined, is emblematic of the constant reversals that have marked United States policy as it continues to try, unfathomably, to exercise complete control over developments in a country it hardly understands.

Vital though UN involvement is in healing the very deep wounds inflicted by this continuing was on both Iraq and much of the Muslim world, what is infinitely more important is for the United States to have a coherent policy designed to hand over both political and military control to the Iraqis as soon as possible, as Mr Annan has been saying from the first days of the occupation.

This new crisis with Sistani highlights yet again the isolation of Paul Bremer's team from Iraqi political and social realities. It is Sistani's implicit support for the American occupation which has been instrumental in restraining a Shia revolt, but this support has from the very beginning been explicitly predicated on speedy elections, which will end a century of marginalization of the Shia majority in Iraq.

When the Nov 15 agreement between the US and the Iraqi Governing Council indicated that the handover to a new Iraqi body would be based on "caucuses" - a novel democratic practices that. Arabs have never heard of - Sistani immediately indicated that this was not acceptable and that elections were essential for the legitimacy of the new government. Astonishingly, this powerful leader's concern was in essence politely ignored. So he has now added an even tougher demand, that any decision on asking the coalition forces to stay on in Iraq after the handover can only be taken by an elected body.

Hence the startling American overture to the United Nations, when just a week ago the US would not indicate that they would even send a senior representative to the Monday meeting. Indeed, the US document for the June 30 handover, which was agreed on by the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, envisaged no role for the UN.

For all three parties now, the United Nations is considered essential to providing legitimacy for the new Iraqi government being formed. But there are real divisions here. Sistani wants the UN to certify that the elective process was genuinely democratic.

Kofi Annan recently told the Iraqi Governing Council that he recognizes that "there may not be time to organize free, fair and credible elections" by June 30. But he also told the Council that the process of forming the government must be "conducted in a way that is fully inclusive and transparent. Every segment of Iraqi society should feel represented in the nascent institutions of their country."

A clear American commitment to quickly allow Iraqis to construct, with UN help, such democratic political arrangements would win world wide support, including among most Muslims, who despite their intense opposition to the war and occupation would welcome an honourable American exit from Iraq.

But Mr Annan's stipulations raise the bar quite high and will test American tolerance - democratic Baathists without criminal pasts would have to be included, for example - but in any event certifying the process's legitimacy would require UN monitoring it in all of Iraq. That in turn would require a highly political UN return to Iraq.

Mr Annan, still deeply troubled by the devastating loss of his representative Sergio Vieira de Mello and 24 other colleagues who were killed in July and August by Iraqi insurgents, and conscious as well of the growing perception in the Muslim world that the UN is essentially doing US bidding, has very explicitly laid down non-negotiable conditions for any return before sovereignty is restored to the country. A guarantee of security for staff is one, but no less important is the requirement that the responsibilities and authority that would be given the UN be commensurate with the high risks that it continues to face."

The United Nations has an enormous reservoir of knowledge about Iraq, and also in helping emergent states conduct free elections, write constitutions and create mechanisms for promoting and protecting human rights - all urgent priorities for Iraq. The United States is wise to have recognized at least some of the UN's utility, but there is much it needs to do to get Iraq right.

It is naive, for example, to believe that this June 30 handover will inoculate the Bush administration's own electoral campaign against Iraqi turmoil, since there is little likelihood that day will suddenly bring about a serious drop in insurgent attacks; indeed, few Iraqis and Arabs will take that day to be the end of occupation since tens of thousands of coalition troops will stay on. The US should therefore keep open the option for postponing the handover for a month or two as it negotiates Sistani's demands.

More importantly, the dramatic political capital the United States won with Saddam Hussein's capture and with the startling renunciation of weapons of mass destruction by Libya and the agreements on Iraqi debt forgiveness by France, Germany and Libya - should have been sued to initiate changes in an occupation policy under severe attack from even mainstream US political leaders. But distressingly, Saddam's capture chilled still further the debate as to how to terminate an occupation which has undermined this country's standing worldwide, as well as its own and numerous other nations' security.

With the insurgency now in its ninth month and showing little signs of being snuffed out, the only feasible solution to this crisis must at its core have a political rather than a military imperative. The occupation and insurgency have subjected most Iraqis to a life of unprecedented insecurity, as well as financial and social deprivations that surpass what the country lived through during 13 years of sanctions. In this environment, even a small spark, leave alone a major stand-off with Ayatollah Sistani, could bring a new level of chaos to Iraq. (The writer has served as UN spokesman in Iraq)